Design and Functionality

The Panther’s heatsink looks plain and trivial. It consists of a copper base with four 6mm heat pipes and aluminum fins soldered to those pipes.

The heatsink measures 161x130x50 millimeters at 570 grams of mass.

There are a total of 47 fins in the heatsink, 0.5 millimeters thick and 1.8 millimeters apart from each other.

Each fin is 130x50 millimeters large for a total area of 6100 sq. centimeters. This is not much for a modern tower-design cooler.

Each fin has two halves soldered to the heat pipes as is typical of Prolimatech coolers. Soldering ensures a larger contact area compared to press-fitted fins. The topmost fin sports a company logo.

The Panther doesn’t seem to have any air flow optimizations, yet it does have one special feature notwithstanding the otherwise trivial design. The fins are interleaved.

Prolimatech doesn’t explain the purpose of this solution except some general words about increased efficiency. We guess that this helps take heat off the pipes more effectively. On the other hand, the density of fins in the heat pipes area is very high, especially as the pipes are arranged in a straight line.

The heatsink's performance is likely to depend much on the speed of the fan. We'll check this out in our tests shortly.

The heat pipes are fitted into the grooves in the cooler’s nickel-plated copper base and soldered to it.

The finish quality of the cooler’s 40x38mm sole is barely satisfactory. You can easily see and feel traces of the milling machine.

On the other hand, the surface is ideally flat. The thermal grease imprint is almost perfect, even though indicative of a barely conspicuous protrusion in the center.

The cooler is equipped with a single Red Vortex 12 LED fan. It is a 120x120x25mm device with nine bright-red blades.

The speed of the fan is PWM-regulated within a speed range of 800 to 1600 RPM. The peak air flow and noise level are specified to be 72.7 CFM and 29.1 dBA, respectively. The static pressure and service life of the sleeve bearing are not declared.

The bearing type and other specs are indicated on the fan's sticker.

According to the specs, the fan needs about 3.6 watts at maximum speed. In our tests it had a peak power draw of 2.6 watts and a startup voltage of 6.6 volts. The fan’s impeller and motor are 112 and 45 millimeters in diameter. The 4-wire sleeved cable is 250 millimeters long.

The fan can be easily attached to the heatsink with two wire brackets.

The Panther comes with a pair of additional brackets for installing a second fan for exhaust. It looks much better with the Red Vortex 12 LED, we must admit.

The bright red highlighting makes the fan and cooler even more attractive.